Crush Rush

I cannot tell you the cell phone number of my sister, either of my brothers, my Mum, Dad, best friend Ariel who I’ve known since I was born, or, hell I don’t even know Patricia’s phone number…! BUT, I can tell you the phone numbers of my five friends from Grade 7, Ariel’s PARENT’S home number, my Dad’s old office number (he’s been retired for 10+ years) and the boy I liked from down the street, or again, his parent’s phone number.

Back in the 1990s if you wanted to connect with your crush, you played a telephone game called: Please don’t let their parents answer. Please don’t let their parents answer. Please… “OH! Hi, Mrs. March… I’m good thanks, how are you?... Oh, um, my parents? Yeah no, they’re good… sure, I’ll tell them you say hi… I was wondering if, um, yeah, is Chris free at all?”

Hurdle #1 was quickly followed by Hurdle #2 - the excruciating heart in your throat, longest pause in your life when Mom put the receiver down to go find Chris leaving you to sweat:
a.) will he take the call when his Mom tells him who it is?
b.) maybe it would be easier if he didn’t?
c.) Hang up. Hang up. Hang up, before the scariest outcome of all…
d.) Chris: “Hello?”

FULL TEENAGE. BODY. PULSE.

You see Millennials, there was a time when you couldn’t write, re-write, delete, re-compose, delete again, hover your finger over the send button, send yourself a practice text to see how it reads, check to see if they read the text you now wish you hadn’t sent because it’s been 30 minutes and they haven’t responded, WHY HAVEN'T THEY RESPONDED??? Wait!! There’s three dots!! And then the three dots disappear :( You sent a wink face?! I cannot BELIEVE you sent a wink face, that was so stupid...THE DOTS ARE BACK!! All the emotions were the same, but in the '90s you had to get it out right the first time, and trust me, you never phucking did...

“Hey Chris, so, um, yeah… I, we… how was, I mean, I saw you at school today and, wanted to ask you if…”

Looonnnggg uncomfortable pause. Unnaturally long. Like Chris could have gone to the fridge, grabbed a can of coke, drank said coke and come back long…

GRACE: Do you, if it’s okay I wanted to call you to ask you… um, because I totally forgot because I’m such a tool, but maybe, yeah no, do you remember what day, Mrs. Bree said the English test was gonna be?”

AKA: I AM MAD CRAZY IN LOVE WITH YOU AND I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU AND I WANT TO BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND AND MAKE OUT WITH YOU SOOO BAD!

CHRIS: I don’t think we’re in the same English class so, I dunno… Sorry.

AKA: I DON’T THINK WE’RE IN THE SAME ENGLISH CLASS SO, I DUNNO… SORRY.

And it starts...

Horrifying at the time, yes, but man, first crushes were the BEST weren’t they? When you discovered this amazing new emotion of liking someone? Or someone liking you? And although the courtship rules have changed since the ‘90s, no matter if it’s communicated through letter passing, locker notes, phone calls, texts, words, drawings, emoticons or, heaven forbid, IN PERSON… the excitement of a young person’s heart sparking for the first time... is timeless.

Love,
Grace

HOMEWORK: Who was your teenage celebrity crush?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parental ghosting

Image
Everyone has been ghosted at some point in their modern-day life. Whether it be a friend who fell off the earth, that boy that’s “just not that into you”, or the guy that promised to buy your car online but never showed. But what about being ghosted by your parents? This was very common during our childhood summers. As soon as the sun rose, young people slowly started to surface. We were fed, then tenderly kicked out of the house with the complete expectation that we would be home in time for supper. In fact, if we came home before supper, we were asked if we were ok, or if someone bit us, or the infamous “what are you doing home? “We had no clip-on water bottles, no lunch box with cute heart shaped sandwiches or lunchables, no sweater, no snacks, no money, sometimes even no shoes – and definitely no cell phone. Parental ghosting looked a little different than today’s “ceasing all communication and contact with an individual without any apparent warning”. At a young age, it usually st...
Read more

Cursing Cursive

Image
When Grace and I were growing up, we had to learn the basics like how to read, do arithmetic (that’s math young people), understand and speak a language (in our case this was french and english with solid phonetics), and to write.  And when I mean write – I mean write in cursive. That’s where your letters are all connected, flow like liquid gold, and have gorgeous curves throughout the capital and lower case letters. When you’re fluent in cursive writing, it’s like a beautiful dance between écriture and personality that seamlessly come together. We used to practice our absolute best cursive writing when we were in elementary school and had to write book reports – then into high school when we wrote essays. No kids, there were not computers in most homes yet - or if there were, your parents were very very well off. We didn’t get our first home computer until I was 19. I know, shocking right? Quoting Mr. St. Sauveur “Ow do you not ave a computer in your ome - you ave running wah-ta...
Read more

The infamous "Grade 13 Christmas Play"

Image
Omg it’s almost Christmas. At Duke of York, this was the most “fav-ou-rite time of the year” for us kids. We had candy-grams to buy and send out to our friends to help raise money for grad (yes, you get four Glen Coco); we had a festive spirit week to participate in that included Jammie Day, Silly Slippers Day, Santa Hat Day, Tacky Christmas Sweater “before it was a thing” Day, homemade gift exchanges with friends, Secret Santa shenanigans and, to close off the festivities – the Grade 13 Christmas play. This was the most exciting holiday event for any graduate from Duke of York. It was an all-inclusive production where every single graduate had a role either writing scripts, acting, producing skits, choreographing the dance showcase, music, overall logistics, AV crew, or writing the class song. We were to entertain the entire school for an afternoon – and mostly at the faculty’s expense. Sorry Mr. Farooqui. Grace was on student council and with drama being her jam, she was knee deep i...
Read more